‘Guantanamo hunger strike is prisoners’ only way to reclaim dignity’

The detainee hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay’s maximum-security prison is a last-resort cry for help from those who have spent years in custody without being charged, and who have no hope of release, anti-war activist Sara Flounders told RT.

Most of the 130 terror suspects imprisoned in Camp 6 of
Guantanamo Bay may be involved in a hunger strike that started in early March. The protest
allegedly started after prison administrators confiscated inmates'
personal belongings, including Korans – the overwhelming majority
of Guantanamo detainees are devout Muslims from the Middle
East.

RT:If the abuse the inmates are describing is true,
surely there must have been a reason? Perhaps repeated
transgressions? What do you think?

Sara Flounders: Certainly, it is not a valid theory. The
treatment in Guantanamo from the very first moment that the
prisoners were kidnapped from the other side of the world and
brought to Guantanamo has been horrendous. And it is the
organizations such as the Center for Constitutional Rights who have
fought for the most elementary rights for these prisoners. And
their hunger strikes are the only way of even making themselves
heard over years and years without any hope of release, without any
real charges.

It was a Center for Constitutional Rights study that took the
government figures to confirm that 92 percent of all the prisoners
held in Guantanamo really had no connection at all to Al-Qaeda.
They were sort of bought and sold and brought to Guantanamo as part
of the US war on terror, justified as part of that war and with no
real standing.

And they are really just part of the thousands of prisoners held
around the world in US secret prisons or in prison ships, secret
bases. It is an enormous problem and they are also a part of the
hundreds of Muslim prisoners in the US, who have been held, who
have been framed on charges, who are held in solitary confinement
and special management units.

RT:Why is it only Guantanamo that is talked about
when this comes out?

SF: The US’s own publicity, that somehow this US base but
off the US mainland gave them complete control and out of the hands
of US courts. So its very existence was a challenge and this is
where they claimed they were bringing high profile prisoners. But
as I say 92 percent of them, I don’t know what kind of a failure
rate is that, for those with no charges, and even those with whom
they made specific charges, they’ve used all manners of torture, of
waterboarding, of isolation and so on again and again. This really
is really in every aspect a crime.

RT:Is it that nobody there deserves to be
there?

SF: The real question is US treatment. No one in the
world deserves this form of US treatment which has become
absolutely routine and systematic. That is the use of torture, the
use of isolation, humiliation, degradation, religious insult - all
of this.

RT:So why is it allowed to continue? I’m sure a lot
of the American public know about it, don’t they?

SF: Well, it is allowed to continue, despite every
promise, including promises by the Obama administration that the
first thing he would do, and this was four years ago, was to shut
down Guantanamo and of course he did not, because there is a big,
big interest at stake in this lie, that has now been extended into
the NDAA and an attack on the rights of everyone in the US and
people around the world. It extended those who a decade ago were
kidnapped and put into prisons.

Today they simply fire a drone at them and assassinate whole
villages. So this is a big extension on attacks on everyone’s
rights, dignity. And it is important that these prisoners are
resisting with the only measure, the only thing that they can do is
to not eat food in order to attract attention to the grievous
conditions and the insults that they are routinely
given.

RT:But where is it going to get them? This is not
their first hunger strike.

SF: Prisoners around the world, and this is true in the
Palestinian struggle, the Irish struggle, the struggle in South
Africa and hear in the US know, that a hunger strike, at least
maybe a way of reclaiming dignity, of showing resistance in the
face of overwhelming power and that is why, I think, these
prisoners have chosen the same tactic. What else? They have no
other weapon but their own body.

RT:Do you agree with the argument that advocates the
existence of Guantanamo and that it saves American lives?

SF: No. It is a complete fraud. Because any of the
information gained through torture and isolation- what kind of
information is that? These people are held for years and years. And
it is an outrage. Guantanamo should be shut down, absolutely, and
the thousands held in secret prisons released - there has to be an
account for that.

RT:When do you think it is going to close?

SF: It has to close. And I think the work a number of
courageous and determined lawyers have done has been exemplary in
challenging this policy, but it also needs to be a much larger
challenge, here in the US and around the world, demanding an end to
these policies of torture.